No Mortal Thing: A Thriller (40 page)

She spoke through a mouthful: ‘I hear that my father met other men recently to discuss whom you should marry – what alliances we can make with you. A piece of horsemeat for trading.’

Marcantonio couldn’t tell her –
yet
– to go shag herself. One day, not far away, she could go out through the door with her bag and the family would belong to him. His word would rule. Soon. Not
yet
.

‘When, Aunt, will you consider marriage?’ It was said with exaggerated politeness that would not have fooled her.

‘When I find the right man, and he will be my choice, not
arranged
as a matter of political gain.’ The banana was finished, the skin thrown into the bin. She drank from a water bottle, then rounded on him. ‘Is he there, the man who followed you from Germany? You brought this down on us. You sit all night with a gun on your knee because you need to make a few euros. You are responsible for this inconvenience to us. Are you stupid?’

He went out into the night with his gun and the dogs, slipped back across the yard, then behind the trellis, and went to his chair.

He had seen the light come on in the kitchen.

He heard the wind, soft, and the hushed whimpers of the wolf. Jago thought it near the time. He would linger a little longer, to be certain, then move. He thought it enough that the leader of the family should be trapped in his bunker in darkness, panic surging. Then he could climb back up the hillside, find the guys in the camouflage suits, wish them well and thank them for their kindness. He thought again of the huge wealth of the old man in the bunker, the power he wielded over life and death, saw him groping for a hand torch or a candle and matches, the air around him getting damper and colder. He would wait a few more minutes, then move. He was calm and the birds above him were still and quiet. He shared the night with the wolf but could do nothing to salve its wound.

‘What do you want?’ she demanded.

It had been Fred’s idea. He had taken the lead and rung a bell, then beaten his fist on the door. The camera above had swivelled to gain better focus on them. Three hours’ sleep. Through the wall Fred had heard Carlo snoring. The door opened and he’d asked for her.

When they had driven into Archi, a sprawled suburb to the north of Reggio, Carlo had told Fred that he’d have preferred to be snug in the belly of a main battle tank, not in the small airport hire car. It was still night-time and there were watchers on the street: men leaning against lampposts and smoking, men with skinny dogs on leashes, men sitting on benches . . . No one seemed to have anything to do – they weren’t hurrying to work or sweeping a pavement before opening a business. They were just watching and keeping track of visitors. Fred had said it was the ‘alternative state’, demonstrating that strangers were logged in, monitored. He thought it important to be there.

She was smaller than when he’d met her on the street. Then she had been dressed warmly for the late evening: now she had on just a thin cotton nightdress. ‘What do you want? Why have you come here?’

She was in the doorway, a man in a dressing-gown hovering behind her.

Fred said, ‘It’s about Jago Browne, where you took him and—’

‘What do you know of him? And what do you know about Calabria and survival in this city?’

Fred stayed calm. The police in Berlin did courses on anger management, how to confront verbal assault. He was the voice of reason. ‘He should not be here. Certain matters should be left to law-enforcement officers to deal with.’

‘You know nothing.’

‘What I do know is that if he is taken he will be cut into small pieces. Without mercy.’

‘He’s too old to need a nanny.’

Carlo spoke, ‘What part of yourself did you wave at him?’

She flared, ‘Were you ever on your knees fighting because you believed in something? I think you just took the work benefits and the overtime payments.’

They turned away. Fred thought it a ‘clusterfuck’ moment. The door slammed behind them.

Fred said, through gritted teeth, ‘I don’t know why we bother.’

He sensed Carlo’s grin. ‘Because we get better pensions.’

‘God protect us from crusaders, bigots, her and her crowd. You know what we had in Germany in the Middle Ages? We had feudal warrior barons, each with a fortress, and they ran their territories ruthlessly. Their word was law. Nothing changed. It just transferred here from Saxony, Thuringia and Mecklenburg. The Englishman came here with stupidity. She waved God knows what at him . . . She laughs at us because we are the little people.’

‘If I was asked, “What did you do, Dad, in the great war against organised crime?” I’d say I ticked off the days till my ID was shredded, put in the expenses, then enjoyed the pension scheme. Anything else?’

Fred felt Carlo’s heavy hand settle on his shoulder. Good expenses? Yes, why not? Knowing their place? Absolutely . . . But every once in a while, the ‘little people’ – he and Carlo – had a special moment: the dawn raid, the ram hitting the door at first light, the dog inside barking, the woman at the top of the stairs with her dressing-gown not properly fastened, the kids howling, and the ‘fat cat’ stumbling from his bed, muttering to his wife about calling the lawyer, dressing at gunpoint and the cuffs going on. Might be worth ten million or a hundred million. The shock on their faces, and the sense of outrage at an invasion of their world. It happened once in a while.

They would screw Bentley Horrocks in a good cause because he was staying at a hotel that intelligence stated was part of the investment portfolio of Bernardo Cancello and his family. Also, Fred knew Brancaleone and fancied he might get to swim there. He and Carlo were growing closer, near enough now to josh with each other, but Fred could show fierce determination, and he was confident that Carlo would match him.

‘I want to say my piece about her. In a theatre she has only a walk-on part. Our dear Consolata is not the lead in the performance. She thinks she is, but she isn’t. She’s a convenience. Am I right? Time will tell. I’ll drive.’

Carlo took the wheel.

It was the hour before dawn, the time when men died in their beds, the lucky and the few. The time when the storm squads of the
cacciatore
would break into a bunker or flood a safe house, throw a flash-and-bang grenade and take a prisoner. It was the time when a man eased from a woman’s bed because soon a cuckolded husband would be back from a night’s thieving, the time when dogs slept and owls were quiet. Very soon the cockerel would crow, not that Bernardo would hear it. He tossed in his bed.

The light was on. He heard the whine of the air-conditioner, the hum of the refrigerator and the regular drip of condensation. It would soon be the start of an important day for him, for Giulietta, for Marcantonio. A grim smile. In vest and underpants, he padded towards the basin where his toothbrush was and his shaver. He would not go back to sleep. He would watch something on television. It would be an important day for his daughter, his grandson and for Father Demetrio, who had been his friend. He took no pleasure from what would happen that day to the priest, nor any sadness. After Giulietta had been to Brancaleone she would go for her weekly rendezvous with the clerk from the Palace of Justice in Reggio. She would meet him near the uppermost peaks of Montalto, and he would tell her the latest developments. Bernardo’s privation in the bunker was nearing its end and she would bring confirmation of it. But first she would go to Brancaleone.

He used to go to Brancaleone every Thursday afternoon. He smiled to himself. Peering into the mirror he saw his ravaged old face crack in the lines of his smile. It was a private moment. Sometimes – not often – he went on a Tuesday afternoon as well. A fine woman. She had made him laugh, and almost made him fall in love. A woman who had lived for three and a half years in Brancaleone in an apartment that he had paid for in cash and overlooked the beach. She had summoned the courage to deliver an ultimatum. She had called a halt to their relationship because he would not divorce his wife. To separate legally from Mamma, to marry again, was impossible. It would have broken a relationship of convenience with a family from Locri, and he did good business with that family. It was an alliance of substance. That woman now lived in Sicily. It had happened a long time ago, when Giulietta was a child.

He had not flaunted her, had maintained the greatest discretion, had never embarrassed Mamma, had never told anyone: a lawyer from Milan had handled the purchase of the apartment. When he went, less often now, to Brancaleone he always looked for the apartment and the balcony, expecting to see her . . .

A busy day ahead. Excitement still stirred in him at the thought of a killing done in his name.

Stefano had been out for a half-hour and had used his time well. He had polished the interior of the City-Van, using a spray on the plastic, then working at it with a cloth, and had brought out a stiff brush to clean the seat on which she would sit. He loved Giulietta alone among the family.

She came out of the house wearing a smart suit and carrying a lightweight briefcase, which would be for effect only and was probably empty. He heard the drone of the scooter and the kid’s lights powered up the track. He might have been her father. For that he would have been killed – not pleasantly. But the risk had fuelled the thrill.

It had not happened often, in days long past, often when the heat was suffocating and the
padrino
was away for a day’s discussion with allies. There would have been lemonade on the kitchen table. Mamma had begun it. He would not have dared to. Surprisingly, she was tender. Stefano would sit on a hard chair and she would pour the lemonade, then crouch over him, unbutton his fly, and put the rubber on him. Then she would hitch up her skirt and lower herself onto him. If the
padrino
had known, Stefano’s death would have been nightmarish, and his corpse would never have been found. Would Mamma have survived? He had seen the family’s reaction when the scandal of Annunziata’s affairs became known – and she had refused to follow the constraints of the
vedova bianca
. Slow, exquisite lovemaking. She’d had a sensitivity that he doubted she ever offered to her husband. A hot day, no wind, sweating from outside work, and the supply of condoms had run short. They had done it, and that night, after his return, she had given herself eagerly, as she told it, to her husband and had not made him withdraw. The dates matched. There was a chance that Giulietta was Stefano’s, and a chance that she was not. It was many years since he had been with Mamma, on the chair by the kitchen table, and now she touched him only rarely with a little gesture of shared intimacy.

He spoke briefly to the kid, and they checked their phones. The scooter went and its lights caught the men who were down the lane, watching – close enough, if called.

He opened the door for Giulietta. He had used a scent spray in the car so that she would not be put off by the smell of old oil and accumulated sweat. He thought it good that she was going to meet the Englishman early: she would catch him when his concentration was lowest and do the best deal. It was unusual, in an ’Ndrangheta family, for a woman to play such a part. He thought she did it well – better than the little shit, Marcantonio. She might have been his daughter but Stefano was not over-familiar with her. She sat on the cleaned seat, thanked him absently, and he closed the door for her. His phone did not trill so the road ahead would be clear.

He pulled away. He heard the cockerel crowing and wondered how much longer Marcantonio would sit in the yard with the shotgun, and what legacy the little shit had left them. He wondered how the day would eke out – and why a man would come so far and risk so much to end up with parallel scratched lines on a worthless vehicle. He assumed that by now he would have gone back to where he had come from.

He set off for Brancaleone, the coast and saw, in the distance, the first smear of dawn.

They had done it and could not undo it – neither would accept the burden of individual blame. They had not considered the consequences. Lunacy . . .

He had come, taken their food and disappeared back down the slope. There had been neither sight nor sound of him since. They had good night-vision equipment, the same as the regular military used and the secret service, and they knew that Marcantonio was on the seat at the end of the trellis, with the dogs. They had seen Giulietta leave with the driver, the cockerel had crowed, and the day would soon start. Mamma always came out of the kitchen door early with food for the chickens. They could follow her part of the way if they used the ‘heat-seeker’, but the batteries were damp so it was useless now.

They didn’t know where he was. They had not transmitted the picture they had taken of him when they had given him the food. Fabio and Ciccio had acknowledged that there were moments in even the most illustrious careers when information was suppressed, for reasons that were not easily explained. Why was he there? All they had was a meaningless statement concerning a woman’s face. They had absorbed the panorama below them without difficulty. They knew the ritual timelines of the family and its protectors, who were down the track, and had observed their routines. They knew, too, that the
padrino
was close by, but he was careful and had outwitted them.